The Red Pill

Cassie Jaye, a feminist documentary maker, sets out to examine the men's rights movement. She intended a critical film; as the shooting goes on she begins to question her own position, and the film becomes a record of that shift. She includes her own video diaries in it. Cassie Jaye directs. The production is part of the argument. The backers financing the film withdrew when they saw where it was going, and it was finished with money raised on Kickstarter. That has been read both as proof of the documentary's independence and as proof that it became indebted to a particular audience. The reaction on release was large. Some cinemas in Australia cancelled screenings, universities saw protests, and most of what was discussed concerned whether it should be shown rather than what was in it. The film itself was also criticised. The problems the movement raises, custody, workplace deaths, suicide rates and conscription, are relayed directly, while how the misogynist wing inside that movement operates is not examined enough. Who it is for: viewers interested in cultural polarisation and in contested documentary. Who it is not for: the film takes a side, the opposing view is under represented, and the statistics arrive without context.